Fiesta Cancun

Fiesta Cancun (https://fiestacancunfl.com/) is a beautiful, festive, casual Mexican restaurant in Altamonte Springs.  It is tucked off the beaten path at 260 Douglas Avenue, just off busy Semoran Boulevard (State Road 436) and a minute from I-4 exit 92.  You can’t see it from Semoran, but turn onto Douglas, and it will be on your left before you hit the Waffle House on the left and the Cracker Barrel on the right.

The dining room is so colorful and fun, it is hard not to get swept up in a celebratory spirit and feel like you’re on vacation.  I blacked out the faces of nearby diners to preserve their privacy, but you can still tell that the vibes are super-festive.

I’ve said this before, but whenever a Mexican restaurant offers aguas frescas, I know we’re going to be in for good, authentic food.  I got a passion fruit agua fresca (one of my favorite flavors of anything), and my wife chose jamaica (hibiscus flower).  The glass mugs were huge, but our bill said they cost $7.50 each, and refills cost extra!  (The menu says they cost $4.25 each, so maybe they did charge us for refills.)  As much as I love it, I’ll stick to water in the future and not drink my calories.   

The fresh, free tortilla chips were fine after adding a little salt, and the table salsa was fresh and bright-tasting.  But even better, Fiesta Cancun offers a salsa bar, which was a real treat to me.I love a salsa bar, and it is one of the many reasons I’m such a fan of Las Carretas.  I appreciated that Fiesta Cancun had handwritten signs posted above each salsa explaining what each one was, and what the ingredients were.

Top row:
Sliced onions with habanero peppers, tomatoes, and lime juice
Spicy molcajete sauce with serrano chiles and onions
Spicy taquera sauce with avocado, serrano chiles, onions, cilantro, and mayonnaise to make it creamy

Bottom row:
Spicy red sauce with chiles de arbol, tomatillos, and onions
Non-spicy salsa verde with tomatillo and cilantro (the only one my wife wanted anything to do with)
Spicy Jalisco sauce with chiles de arbol, serrano chiles, tomatillos, and onions

They all looked so good, and of course I tried them all!  They have plenty of tiny plastic cups for you to fill.

My wife was craving a good taco salad in a crispy fried shell.  This one included shredded iceberg lettuce, a healthy dollop of guacamole, and pico de gallo and sour cream on the side.  I availed myself of the pico, since I am a giant fan of the stuff, and she doesn’t care for onions or tomatoes.   You can choose between ground beef, shredded beef, and shredded chicken with the taco salad, but I didn’t see any meat in the photo, and I don’t remember which one my wife ordered.

I had studied the large menu in advance, and I was so excited to see that Fiesta Cancun offered cochinita pibil, a dish from the Yucatan Peninsula that is sometimes called puerco pibil.  It consists of citrus-marinated, slow-roasted pork with a complex array of spices and flavors, cooked until it is fork-tender.  I am always inspired to order it whenever I see it on a menu thanks to the 2003 action movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in which Johnny Depp’s antihero also ordered the dish whenever he encountered it.  The DVD extras (remember those?) included badass writer-director-composer Robert Rodriguez demonstrating his own recipe for puerco pibil*, which I made for a work potluck once.  It was a labor-intensive recipe, and my version came out great, but my old co-workers were a tough crowd that didn’t share my enthusiasm.  My old director actually had the audacity to tell me I should not have wasted so much time making it, and she wouldn’t even try it!    To make a long story short, the cochinita pibil at Fiesta Cancun was dry!  I know, right?  I was disappointed, but I still ate it, and jazzing it up with the various salsas helped immensely.  The black beans were fine, and I did love the rich Mexican rice and tangy-sweet, crunchy, pink pickled onions.  I wouldn’t order it again, but I wasn’t even mad.  I was still having a grand time.

I had also ordered a chile relleno off the a la carte menu, intending to have it later, but I busted into it to make up for the dry pork.  I apologize for not photographing a cross-section of the battered and fried poblano pepper stuffed with melty cheese, but I honestly liked it a lot more than the cochinita pibil.  I would totally come back and try other things on the menu, but I’d get that chile relleno again too.  

I couldn’t take my wife to a Mexican restaurant and not order her churros or sopapillas!  This time, the churros won out.  The fried dough sticks were covered with cinnamon and sugar and came with a chocolate dipping sauce. 

So even though I was disappointed by my cochinita pibil, I would still return to Fiesta Cancun and try other things in the future, if I was ever in Altamonte with people who wanted Mexican food and fun surroundings.  You might have already noticed how vast the menu is, and how they offer a lot more seafood dishes than most Mexican restaurants, which makes sense, given that Cancun is a coastal city on the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.  I think it would be a crowd-pleaser for most groups.  If you’ve been there before, what are your favorite dishes on the menu, and what should I try next time?

*By the way, I’ve been a fan of Robert Rodriguez ever since I first saw his $7,000 self-financed independent debut El Mariachi back in the early ’90s.  As much as I’ve enjoyed most of his movies, his coolest career moment might be when he says in the above video “Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck.”  Spot on.  I also love his advice about learning to cook your two or three favorite dishes very well and making a little restaurant-style menu for your kitchen, to the point where you could always offer a few house specialties to guests with minimal notice or prep.  That’s entertainment!